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Informatica PowerCenter

Informatica PowerCenter

Overview

What is Informatica PowerCenter?

Informatica PowerCenter is a metadata driven data integration technology designed to form the foundation for data integration initiatives, including analytics and data warehousing, application migration, or consolidation and data governance.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

PowerCenter is widely used across organizations for a variety of use cases. Users have found the product to be instrumental in addressing …
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Amazing ETL Tool

9 out of 10
December 01, 2020
Informatica PowerCenter is widely used as an integration tool across many projects. This is being used in specific departments. It lets us …
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Good ETL Platform

8 out of 10
April 06, 2017
Incentivized
Our company bought Informatica PowerCenter around 5 years ago, when we initially set up the BI team in the IT department. After that it …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 11 features
  • Connect to traditional data sources (18)
    9.0
    90%
  • Business rules and workflow (18)
    9.0
    90%
  • Simple transformations (18)
    8.0
    80%
  • Complex transformations (18)
    7.0
    70%
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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

What is Informatica PowerCenter?

Informatica PowerCenter is a metadata driven data integration technology designed to form the foundation for data integration initiatives, including analytics and data warehousing, application migration, or consolidation and data governance.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

#Informatica #Source #Qualifier Online #Tutorial For Beginners - Part 14

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#Informatica #Client Tools #Training Session For Beginners- Part 4 || Video Course

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INFORMATICA ONLINE TRAINING Session | Free Tutorials | Materials | ETL Tool

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Features

Data Source Connection

Ability to connect to multiple data sources

8.5
Avg 8.2

Data Transformations

Data transformations include calculations, search and replace, data normalization and data parsing

7.5
Avg 8.4

Data Modeling

A data model is a diagram or flowchart that illustrates the relationships between data

8.2
Avg 8.2

Data Governance

Data governance is the practise of implementing policies defining effective use of an organization's data assets

9
Avg 8.2
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Product Details

What is Informatica PowerCenter?

Informatica PowerCenter is a metadata driven data integration technology designed to form the foundation for data integration initiatives, including analytics and data warehousing, application migration, or consolidation and data governance.

Informatica PowerCenter Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Informatica PowerCenter is a metadata driven data integration technology designed to form the foundation for data integration initiatives, including analytics and data warehousing, application migration, or consolidation and data governance.

Reviewers rate Connect to traditional data sources and Data model creation and Business rules and workflow highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of Informatica PowerCenter are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(92)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

PowerCenter is widely used across organizations for a variety of use cases. Users have found the product to be instrumental in addressing their data integration needs and solving challenges related to data quality management, master data management, data masking, and data virtualization. With PowerCenter, users can easily extract, transform, and load data from various sources such as SAP and Salesforce into their data warehouses and data marts. They appreciate how the product optimizes data for reporting tools and facilitates the generation of accurate reports.

Another common use case for PowerCenter is integrating data from disparate sources and migrating data from legacy systems to newer infrastructure. Users have found the product to be efficient in automating ETL processes and ensuring timely and efficient data loads. They also value its advanced security features, which make administration easier. Many users have praised PowerCenter's ease of use, fast development capabilities, and multi-user development environment with a check-out/check-in mechanism that supports collaborative work.

Overall, PowerCenter has become a mainstay ETL tool in organizations due to its scalability, flexibility, and robustness as an ETL engine. From loading data into data warehouses and data marts to feeding information into COTs applications or Teradata Data Warehouses, PowerCenter has proven to be an indispensable tool for enterprise-wide data integration across a range of industries including marketing, healthcare, finance, and more.

Seamless data integration capabilities: Multiple reviewers have praised Informatica PowerCenter for its seamless data integration capabilities, with users stating that it effortlessly connects to multiple sources and targets. This feature simplifies the complex process of integrating data from various systems, providing a significant advantage in terms of efficiency and productivity.

User-friendly interface: The user-friendly interface of Informatica PowerCenter has been consistently appreciated by reviewers, who find it highly intuitive and easy to navigate. Users state that the application of complicated business rule logic is straightforward, thanks to the intuitive design process for creating ETL mappings and workflows. The minimal learning time and effort required to work with PowerCenter's interface are seen as significant advantages.

Reusability and streamlined development processes: Reviewers have highlighted PowerCenter's ability to capture and share logic in mapplets, enabling reusability and streamlining development processes. This feature contributes to a seamless workflow for developers, making the development and maintenance of code in PowerCenter straightforward. Users value this functionality as it enhances efficiency and promotes consistency across projects.

Lack of Documentation: Several users have expressed frustration with the limited availability and insufficient documentation for Informatica PowerCenter. This has made it challenging for users to achieve advanced tasks and work with complex workflows, hindering their ability to fully utilize the software.

Complex Installation and Configuration: Many reviewers have encountered difficulties during the installation and configuration process of Informatica PowerCenter. The software consists of multiple components that require significant time and resources to set up effectively, causing inconvenience for users.

Limited Integration Capabilities: Some users have found it difficult to integrate code from other languages like Java, Python, or R into Informatica PowerCenter. This limitation forces users to build multiple hops in a data pipeline, resulting in additional complexity and potential inefficiencies in their workflow.

Users recommend Informatica PowerCenter for various tasks such as data migration, ETL, and data integration. They find it to be a reliable tool with strong support and powerful mapping and visualization capabilities. Additionally, users mention its ability to connect and fetch data from different source systems, as well as its capabilities for processing and transforming data. Informatica PowerCenter is highly recommended for companies dealing with large amounts of data and those in need of real-time data integration. Users also mention its plugins for integrating with other applications. While some users acknowledge that Informatica PowerCenter is more expensive than other software, they still recommend it as the best ETL tool in the market.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Gurcan Orhan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Informatica Power Center is easy to understand, gives you the opportunity to perform fast development, and also supports a multi-user development environment with a check-out/check-in mechanism. It performs transformation levels of ETL (Extract & Transform & Load) very fast.
Advanced security features also help you to perform administration more easily and with confidence.
  • Transformation speed.
  • Supports a multi-User development environment.
  • A fast learning curve.
  • It needs additional hardware.
  • Lots of windows sometimes reduce your focus.
  • It would be better to have a more compact design with the ability to aim toward specific topics.
If you have many developers who will use Informatica Power Center for more than 80% of their work, multi-user development will reduce your administration effort with less chance of losing code.
When data is loaded to the Informatica Application Server, transformations perform very fast. It also supports push down ETL if your ETL mappings are simple or have average complexity.
Data Source Connection (2)
50%
5.0
Connect to traditional data sources
100%
10.0
Connecto to Big Data and NoSQL
N/A
N/A
Data Transformations (2)
80%
8.0
Simple transformations
90%
9.0
Complex transformations
70%
7.0
Data Modeling (5)
78%
7.8
Data model creation
N/A
N/A
Metadata management
100%
10.0
Business rules and workflow
100%
10.0
Collaboration
100%
10.0
Testing and debugging
90%
9.0
Data Governance (2)
100%
10.0
Integration with data quality tools
100%
10.0
Integration with MDM tools
100%
10.0
  • It works seamlessly with other Informatica products (i.e. Metadata Management, Data Quality).
  • Since data is read and written through the network, when you cannot perform E-LT you'll need more hardware.
  • Good for a multi-user development environment.
Informatica Power Center was already selected by my company before me. I just learned the software and started using it.
Positives;
- Multi User Development Environment
- Speed of transformation
- Seamless integration between other Informatica products.

Negatives;
- There should be less windows to maintain developers' focus while using. You probably need 2 big monitors when you start development with Informatica Power Center.
- Oracle Analytical functions should be natively used.
- E-LT support as well as ETL support.
Positives;
- Multi-user development environment.
- The speed of transformation.
- Seamless integration with other Informatica products.

Negatives;
- There should be fewer windows, to maintain developers' focus while using. You probably need two big monitors when you start development with Informatica Power Center.
- Oracle Analytical functions should be natively used.
- E-LT support as well as ETL support.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use PowerCenter throughout the organization, under a centralized IT implementation with a decentralized (or divisional) user base. It has been our mainstay and go-to ETL tool for many years. From SAP to Oracle to SQL, it lets us connect to just about anything in order to pipe data out into different repositories. Mainly it feeds our various data warehouse and data marts, but we also use it to extract data from our old CRM system into our Salesforce transition.
  • The number of connectors, and the coverage for all the possibilities, are excellent, giving us the comfort that we won’t have to build anything custom.
  • The flow visualizations are very nice, as we often have to go in and forensically review work done by others who are no longer with the company. This helps us accurately identify source data.
  • The alert system is a great feature I think is often underutilized. We’ve been able to set up a great communication tree of notifications when a job fails, saving our DBA’s a lot of time sending out emergency communications.
  • The pricing on the connectors is inflated, in my opinion. Plus, the fact you have to pay for them twice if you also utilize IICS (Informatica Cloud). I think you should only have to pay once, regardless of what platform from the vendor you are using. This is a big Con for me, as a manager that has to budget for these things.
  • It requires more in-depth training than some of the other ETL tools we use, including Informatica Cloud. With Cloud, you can guess and be right 99% of the time. With PowerCenter, you need a few weeks of training, and then still have to ask an expert.
  • Setting up secure agents is always difficult, but I’ve seen it done better with other tools like MULE. With Informatica, you tend to need 12 people in a room from all over the business to troubleshoot why the connection is not working.
I think anything where you need to shuttle data in/out of one complex system and into another is a great fit for PowerCenter (on prem). The “Upsert” function of updating and inserting has saved us countless dollars in storage space and the in/out transfer of data to the cloud, so if you are pulling data out of your on-prem systems and moving it to the cloud, this is the tool for you. Coupled with a good Data Warehouse or Data Lake strategy, you can be ELT instead of ETL, as well. Makes feeding your BI Tools fast and easy.
Data Source Connection (2)
100%
10.0
Connect to traditional data sources
100%
10.0
Connecto to Big Data and NoSQL
100%
10.0
Data Transformations (2)
90%
9.0
Simple transformations
80%
8.0
Complex transformations
100%
10.0
Data Modeling (5)
98%
9.8
Data model creation
100%
10.0
Metadata management
100%
10.0
Business rules and workflow
100%
10.0
Collaboration
100%
10.0
Testing and debugging
90%
9.0
Data Governance (2)
90%
9.0
Integration with data quality tools
90%
9.0
Integration with MDM tools
90%
9.0
  • Overall, though it can be quite expensive, we’ve gained a lot of positives in both ROI and customer satisfaction with this tool. With the current set-up in a very large company, we can manage the implementation with a single admin and 2 DBA’s, supporting 50+ power users.
  • Any time you can free up trapped data and get it into a functional container for downstream tools, it is a win. PowerCenter lets us do this and a lot more.
  • I think they should give up on the cloud version and stick to PowerCenter as their main offering. The features are just not there on the cloud, and PowerCenter is very robust.
  • I do not care for their customer service. Their first response is always that it's not their fault, so they cannot help. Lots of opportunities to improve there.
PowerCenter is simply so robust and refined that most other apps cannot do as much as it can. Even Informatica’s own Cloud version is so anemic as to not even compare against it. While from that perspective it feels bloated with too much to navigate through, many of those features eventually come in handy, so you might as well go big with PowerCenter and invest in training and pay decent salaries to keep your turnover low and your productivity high.
IBM InfoSphere Data Replication, IBM InfoSphere Information Server, webMethods AgileApps Cloud, Talend Enterprise Service Bus, SAP Address and Geocoding Directories, SAP Agile Data Preparation, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) Platform, WebSphere DataPower Gateway
PowerCenter is robust and fast, and it does a great job meeting all the needs, not just the most commercially vocal needs. In the hands of an expert power user, you can accomplish almost anything with your data. It is not for new users or intermittent users-- for that the Cloud version is a better fit. Be prepared for costly connectors (priced differently for each source or destination you are working with), and just be planful of your projects so you are not paying for connectors you no longer need or want.
The tool is very flexible and will meet most, if not all, of your data transformation needs. It is an expert-level tool, so building your knowledge-base and user-base (and keeping that base healthy!) is very important. But it will pay off with strong data management and the ability to leverage that data in ways you haven’t thought of yet. Bottom line, data is money, and PowerCenter helps you monetize your data.
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